Refuting Evolution

Bird evolution?

Birds are animals with unique features like feathers and special lungs, and most
are well designed for flight. Evolutionists believe they evolved from reptiles,
maybe even a type of dinosaur. Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science
even presents an alleged dinosaur-bird intermediate as evidence for evolution. This
intermediate and other arguments for bird evolution are critically examined in this
chapter. This chapter also provides detailed information on some of the unique features
of birds.

Archaeopteryx

Teaching about Evolution has several imaginary ‘dialogues’
between teachers. In one of them (p.8), there is the following exchange:

Karen: A student in one of my classes at university told me that there
are big gaps in the fossil record. Do you know anything about that?

Doug: Well, there's Archaeopteryx. It's a fossil that
has feathers like a bird but the skeleton of a small dinosaur. It's one of those
missing links that's not missing any more.

Teaching about Evolution pictured an Archaeopteryx fossil like
this one.

On the same page, there is a picture of a fossil of Archaeopteryx, stating:

A bird that lived 150 million years ago and had many reptilian characteristics,
was discovered in 1861 and helped support the hypothesis of evolution proposed by
Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species two years earlier.

However, Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill and an evolutionist himself, disagrees with assertions like those
of ‘Doug’:

Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered
dinosaur. But it's not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’
is going to change that.1

Archaeopteryx had fully formed flying feathers (including asymmetric vanes
and ventral, reinforcing furrows as in modern flying birds), the classical elliptical
wings of modern woodland birds, and a large wishbone for attachment of muscles responsible
for the downstroke of the wings.3
Its brain was essentially that of a flying bird, with a large cerebellum and visual
cortex. The fact that it had teeth is irrelevant to its alleged transitional status—a
number of extinct birds had teeth, while many reptiles do not. Furthermore, like
other birds, both its maxilla (upper jaw) and mandible (lower jaw) moved. In most
vertebrates, including reptiles, only the mandible moves.4

Feathered dinosaurs?

A legitimate artist's reconstruction of Archaeopteryx, consistent with
its known bird features.2

In the last few years, the media have run headlines about alleged ‘feathered
dinosaurs’ proving that dinosaurs evolved into birds. These alleged ancestors
are types of theropods, the group of carnivorous dinosaurs that includes
Tyrannosaurus rex.

We should remember that the media often sensationalize ‘proofs’ of evolution,
but the later disproofs, even by other evolutionists, hardly rate a mention. For
example, in 1996 there were headlines like ‘Feathered Fossil Proves Some Dinosaurs
Evolved into Birds.’5 This
was about a fossil called Sinosauropteryx prima.6
Creationist publications advised readers to be skeptical and keep an open mind.7 They were vindicated when four leading
paleontologists, including Yale University's John Ostrom, later found that the
‘feathers’ were just a parallel array of fibres,8 probably collagen.

[Update: see Dr Feduccia’s recent research supporting the
identification as collagen, ‘Do Featured Dinosaurs Exist?: Testing the Hypothesis
on Neontological and Paleontological Evidence’, by Alan Feduccia, Theagarten
Lingham-Soliar, and J. Richard Hinchliffe, Journal of Morphology266:125–166,
2005; Published Online: 10 October 2005 (DOI: 10.1002/jmor.10382).]

Another famous alleged dino-bird link was Mononykus, claimed to be a ‘flightless
bird.’9 The cover of Time
magazine even illustrated it with feathers, although not the slightest trace of
feathers had been found.10 Later
evidence indicated that ‘Mononykus was clearly not a bird …
it clearly was a fleet-footed fossorial [digging] theropod.’11

Many news agencies have reported (June 1998) on two fossils found in Northern China
that are claimed to be feathered theropods (meat-eating dinosaurs). The fossils,
Protarchaeopteryx robusta and Caudipteryx zoui, are claimed to
be ‘the immediate ancestors of the first birds.’12

The two latest discoveries are ‘dated’ at 120 to 136 million years while
Archaeopteryx, a true bird, is ‘dated’ at 140 to 150 million
years, making these ‘bird ancestors’ far younger than their descendants!

Feduccia is not convinced, and neither is his colleague, University of Kansas paleontologist
Larry Martin. Martin says: ‘You have to put this into perspective. To the
people who wrote the paper, the chicken would be a feathered dinosaur.’13 Feduccia and Martin believe that
Protarchaeopteryx and Caudipteryx are more likely to be flightless
birds similar to ostriches. They have bird-like teeth and lack the long tail seen
in theropods. Caudipteryx even used gizzard stones like modern plant-eating
birds, but unlike theropods.14

There are many problems with the dinosaur-to-bird dogma. Feduccia points out:

‘It's biophysically impossible to evolve flight from such large bipeds
with foreshortened forelimbs and heavy, balancing tails,’ exactly the wrong
anatomy for flight.15

There is also very strong evidence from the forelimb structures that dinosaurs could
not have been the ancestors of birds. A team led by Feduccia studied bird embryos
under a microscope, and published their study in the journal Science.16 Their findings were reported as
follows:

New research shows that birds lack the embryonic thumb that dinosaurs had, suggesting
that it is ‘almost impossible’ for the species to be closely related.17

Did gliders turn into fliers?

Feduccia and Martin reject the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs, with good
reason. But they are unwilling to abandon evolution, so instead they believe that
birds evolved from reptiles called crocodilomorphs. They propose these
small, crocodile-like reptiles lived in trees, and ‘initially leapt, then
glided from perch to perch.’18

But a gliding stage is not intermediate between a land animal and a flier.
Gliders either have even longer wings than fliers (compare a glider's wingspan
with an airplane's, or the wingspan of birds like the albatross which spend
much time gliding), or have a wide membrane which is quite different from a wing
(note the shape of a hang-glider or a flying squirrel). Flapping flight also requires
highly controlled muscle movements to achieve flight, which in turn requires that
the brain has the program for these movements. Ultimately, this requires new genetic
information that a non-flying creature lacks.

Another problem is:

Neither their hypothetical ancestor nor transitional forms linking it to known fossil
birds have been found. And although they rightly argue that cladistic analyses [comparisons
of shared characteristics] are only as good as the data upon which they are based,
no cladistic study has yet suggested a non-theropod ancestor.19

In short, Feduccia and Martin provide devastating criticism against the idea that
birds evolved ‘ground up’ from running dinosaurs (the cursorial
theory). But the dino-to-bird advocates counter with equally powerful arguments
against Feduccia and Martin's ‘trees-down’ (arboreal) theory.
The evidence indicates that the critics are both right—birds did not evolve
either from running dinos or from tree-living mini-crocodiles. In fact, birds did
not evolve from non-birds at all! This is consistent with the biblical account that
distinct kinds of birds were created on Day 5 (Gen. 1:20–23).

The differences between reptiles and birds

All evolutionists believe that birds evolved from some sort of reptile, even if
they can't agree on the kind. However, reptiles and birds are very different
in many ways. Flying birds have streamlined bodies, with the weight centralized
for balance in flight; hollow bones for lightness which are also part of their breathing
system; powerful muscles for flight, with specially designed long tendons that run
over pulley-like openings in the shoulder bones; and very sharp vision. And birds
have two of the most brilliantly designed structures in nature—their feathers
and special lungs.

Feathers

Feduccia says ‘Feathers are a near-perfect adaptation for flight’ because
they are lightweight, strong, aerodynamically shaped, and have an intricate structure
of barbs and hooks. This structure makes them waterproof, and a quick preen with
the bill will cause flattened feathers to snap into fully aerodynamic shape again.20

Examine the amazing close-up (left) of the barbules of a feather showing the tiny
hooklets and grooves (magnified 200 times).21

The atheistic evolutionist Richard Dawkins, in a book highly recommended by Teaching
about Evolution, glibly states: ‘Feathers are modified reptilian scales,’22 a widely held view among evolutionists.
But scales are folds in skin; feathers are complex structures with a barb, barbules,
and hooks. They also originate in a totally different way, from follicles inside
the skin in a manner akin to hair.

In chapter 2 we showed that every structure or
organ must be represented by information at the genetic level, written
in a chemical alphabet on the long molecule DNA. Clearly, the information required
to code for the construction of a feather is of a substantially different order
from that required for a scale. For scales to have evolved into feathers means that
a significant amount of genetic information had to arise in the bird's DNA which
was not present in that of its alleged reptile ancestor.

As usual, natural selection would not favor the hypothetical intermediate forms.
Many evolutionists claim that dinosaurs developed feathers for insulation and later
evolved and refined them for flight purposes. But like all such ‘just-so’
stories, this fails to explain how the new genetic information arose so
it could be selected for.

Another problem is that selection for heat insulation is quite different
from selection for flight. On birds that have lost the ability to fly, the feathers
have also lost much of their structure and become hair-like. On flightless birds,
mutations degenerating the aerodynamic feather structure would not be as much a
handicap as they would be on a flying bird. Therefore, natural selection would not
eliminate them, and might even select for such degeneration. As usual,
loss of flight and feather structure are losses of information, so are
irrelevant to evolution, which requires an increase of information. All
that matters is that the feathers provide insulation, and hair-like structures are
fine—they work for mammals.23
That is, natural selection would work against the development of a flight
feather if the feathers were needed for insulation. And hairy feathers are adequate.

Downy feathers are also good insulators and are common on flightless birds. Their
fluffiness is because they lack the hooks of flight feathers. Again, natural
selection would work to prevent evolution of aerodynamic feathers from
heat insulators.

See the contrast here between the detailed structures of a feather (left) and scales
(right), both magnified 80 times.

Finally, feather proteins (Φ-keratins) are biochemically different from skin
and scale proteins (α-keratins), as well. One researcher concluded:

At the morphological level feathers are traditionally considered homologous with
reptilian scales. However, in development, morphogenesis [shape/form generation],
gene structure, protein shape and sequence, and filament formation and structure,
feathers are different.24

The avian lung

Drastic changes are needed to turn a reptile lung into a bird lung. In mammalian lungs,
the air is drawn into tiny sacs (alveoli, singular alveolus) where
blood extracts the oxygen and releases carbon dioxide. The stale air is then breathed
out the same way it came in. Reptiles have the same bellows system, but their lungs are septate; i.e. like one big alveolus divided by centrally directed ingrowths called septa (singular septum) coming from the walls. The gas exchange occurs mostly on the septa. Birds also have septate lungs, but their breathing is much more complex. But birds, in addition to their lungs, have a complicated system of air sacs in their bodies, even involving the hollow bones. This system keeps air flowing in one direction through
special tubes (parabronchi,singular parabronchus) in
the lung, and blood moves through the lung's blood vessels in the opposite direction
for efficient oxygen uptake,25
an excellent engineering design.26

How would the ‘bellows’-style lungs of reptiles evolve gradually into
avian lungs? The hypothetical intermediate stages could not conceivably function
properly, meaning the poor animal would be unable to breathe. So natural selection
would work to preserve the existing arrangement, by eliminating any misfit intermediates.

Also, even assuming that we could construct a theoretical series of functional intermediate
stages, would natural selection ‘drive’ the changes? Probably not—bats
manage perfectly well with bellows-style lungs—some can even hunt at an altitude
of over two miles (three km). The avian lung, with its super-efficiency, becomes
especially advantageous only at very high altitudes with low oxygen levels. There
would thus have been no selective advantage in replacing the reptilian lung.27

We should probably not be surprised that Alan Feduccia's major work on bird
evolution doesn't even touch this problem.28

Some recent researchers of Sinosauropteryx's lung structure showed
that ‘its bellows-like lungs could not have evolved into high performance
lungs of modern birds.’29

Interestingly, some defenders of dinosaur-to-bird evolution discount this evidence
against their theory by saying, ‘The proponents of this argument offer no
animal whose lungs could have given rise to those in birds, which are extremely
complex and are unlike the lungs of any living animal.’30 Of course, only evolutionary faith requires that
bird lungs arose from lungs of another animal.

References and notes

Cited in V. Morell, Archaeopteryx: Early Bird Catches
a Can of Worms, Science259(5096):764–65, 5 February
1993. Return to text.

D.P. Prothero and R.M. Schoch, editors, Major Features
of Vertebrate Evolution, On the Origin of Birds and of Avian Flight, by J.H.
Ostrom (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), p. 160–177. Return to text.

A.C. Burke and A. Feduccia, Developmental Patterns and the
Identification of Homologies in the Avian Hand, Science278(5338):666–8,
24 October 1997, with a perspective by R. Hinchliffe, The Forward March of the Bird-Dinosaurs
Halted? p. 596–597; J.D. Sarfati, Dino-Bird Evolution
Falls Flat, Creation20(2):41, March 1998.
Return to text.

Engineers make much use of this principle of counter-current
exchange which is common in living organisms as well—see P.F. Scholander,
The Wonderful Net, Scientific American, April 1957, p. 96–107. Return to text.

K. Padian and L.M. Chiappe, The Origin of Birds and Their
Flight, Scientific American278(2):38–47, February
1998, p. 43. Return to text.

By downloading this material, you agree to the following terms with respect to the
use of the requested material: CMI grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable
license to print or download one (1) copy of the copyrighted work. The copyrighted
work will be used for non-commercial, personal purposes only. You may not prepare,
manufacture, copy, use, promote, distribute, or sell a derivative work of the copyrighted
work without the express approval of Creation Ministries International Ltd. Approval
must be expressed and in writing, and failure to respond shall not be deemed approval.
All rights in the copyrighted work not specifically granted to you are reserved
by CMI. All such reserved rights may be exercised by CMI. This Agreement, and all
interpretations thereof, shall be deemed to be in accordance with the law of the
state of Queensland, Australia. Any dispute arising out of this Agreement shall
be resolved in accordance with Queensland law and the courts of Queensland shall
be deemed to be those of proper jurisdiction and venue.

If you were to read an article every day from this site it would take you 20 years to read them all. Such a wealth of information didn’t arise by chance. Please help us to keep on keeping on. Support this site